rachbxl's 2010 reading

I don't do goals as I find that forcing myself to read things rarely works. However, in 2010 I'd really like to read War and Peace; I started it in 2009 but had to put it aside after 100 pages as it was keeping me from what I was supposed to be doing (learning Polish).

Read this year:

24. A Fair Maiden by Joyce Carol Oates (USA)
23. Sky Burial by Xinran (China, translation)
22. The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas (Australia)
21. One Day by David Nicholls (UK)
20. The Bed I Made by Lucie Whitehouse (UK)
19. Zigzag through the Bitter-Orange Trees by Ersi Sotiropoulos (Greece, translation)
18. Travesuras de la Niña Mala by Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru, in Spanish)
17. The Distance between Us by Maggie O'Farrell (UK)
16. Notes from an Exhibition by Patrick Gale (UK)
15. The Whole Day Through by Patrick Gale (UK)
14. After You'd Gone by Maggie O'Farrell (UK)
13. The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector (translation, Brazil)
12. Family Ties by Clarice Lispector (translation, Brazil, short stories)
11. Committed: a Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage by Elizabeth Gilbert (non-fiction)
10. To Mervas by Elisabeth Rynell (Sweden, translation)
9. Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector (Brazil, translation)
8. The Door by Magda Szabó (Hungary, translation)
7. Instrukcja obsługi Polski by Radek Knapp (in Polish, non-fiction)
6. The Draining Lake by Arnaldur Indridason (Iceland, translation)
5. Granada, a Novel by Radwa Ashour (Egypt, translation from Arabic)
4. Citas en Manhattan by Emma Reverter (Spain, in Spanish)
3. El Salon de Ambar by Matilde Asensi (Spain, in Spanish)
2. Za Glosem Sangomy by Agnieszka Podolecka (Poland, in Polish)
1. Nada by Carmen Laforet (Spain, in Spanish)

I'll be interested in your thoughts on W&P. I've been reading it this month... slooooowly. I don't expect to finish it until February, as I'm busy with a project right now. (If I was smart like you, I'd set it aside and restart, but... I don't wanna.... :)

Yes, I've been following your progress! When I say "set aside", I actually mean "send it to another country where it's too far away to tempt me" or else I'd just have carried right on with it. I'm looking forward to curling up with it over Christmas - fortunately there's not a lot else to do at my dad's...

Progress report (I think there'll be many of these before I finish War and Peace!): I've finished Volume 1 and am well into Volume 2. I'm taking it slowly and enjoying it; I'm in no rush to finish it at all, and I'm going to be reading other things alongside.

My plans for the near future include something I've been looking forward to for a long time - Radwa Ashour's Granada, set in Granada around the time the Muslims and Jews were expelled from al-Andalus in 1492. I'm going to be reviewing it for Belletrista. Also for Belle, I'm going to be reading three Clarice Lispector novels; she's a writer I've been wanting to read for a while.

In addition, as my professional focus is going to be on Spain for the next 6 months because of the Spanish presidency of the EU, which started on 1st Jan and runs till the end of June, this seems like the perfect opportunity for a Spanish reading jag (particularly given the shameful number of unread Spanish novels on my shelves). I'm starting with Nada by Carmen Laforet, which admittedly wasn't on my shelves until I bought it yesterday...!

Rach,

always a pleasure to read your posts.

I read W&P when I was 20, and a lot of water has gone under the bridge since :-). I read Anna Karenina about two years ago and was just bowled over, so perhaps I should return to W&P, but I have a major Faulkner project ahead, as well as Infinite Jest, Goncharov, Pushkin and my continuing Balzac project. That is of course on top of my "regular" job, translating, and reading about translating. (Did you read the Rabassa and Hofstadter books? What did you think of them?) And in connection to Spanish, I have become a great fan of Margaret Jull Costa. But I guess you read in the original.

Hi Rachel, I'll be lurking on your thread again this year. So far you're reading two books I have at home and plan to tackle this year. I read Nada about three years ago in the Spanish, but my Spanish vocabulary really isn't that great, so I bought the English translation, which I've yet to get round to. In spite of my imperfect understanding, I really enjoyed the book though - it's very atmospheric. From looking at your library I can see that your Spanish is clearly far superior to mine!

(Btw, part of the reason I find your reading so interesting is that I work as a translator, and French, Spanish and Polish are three of my languages. I really appreciate the list of recommended Polish authors on your profile page, although I don't know when I'll ever manage to finish a book in Polish. I used to work for the EU too (in Lux) and was sent to Poland for a couple of three-week courses. They helped me greatly, but vocabulary's still the problem. Interpreters need to have a more in-depth knowledge of the language, I think, and I'm envious of your longish stay in Poland! Sorry for the apparent stalkiness coming out in this post - I'm becoming increasingly sociable on LT, but it takes a while to pluck up the courage to comment on new threads!)

I'm looking forward to reading your review of Granada.

Me too!

Hi rach, eagerly awaiting your review of Granada as i'm fascinated with anything that has to do with Moorish Spain.

And as you're embarking on a Spanish reading jag, you cannot miss Javier Marias. I especially recommend A Heart So White, an all-time favorite read of mine. It might interest you to know that the narrators of his novels are almost always translators (Marias is himself also a translator).

I'm eagerly awaiting your review of Nada.

If you're doing a Spanish jag I'm definitely coming back to see what you're reading. You'll also have to do a good review of Nada 'cause I read that for a Spanish lit class back in undergrad but remember nothing of it. Not even whether I liked it or not.

Thank you all for your visits!

>5 polutropos: Andrew, I did it the other way round and read Anna Karenina in my early twenties - no idea which translation because that didn't interest me at the time, but I thought it was wonderful. I'm thinking it might be time for a re-read, although I hardly ever re-read anything (too many unread books out there); this time I'd go for the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation as I'm very much enjoying what they've made of War and Peace.

Did you read the Rabassa and Hofstadter books?
Er, yes, I read the Rabassa last year and had a rather violent reaction to it - see post 99 in last year's thread. The Hofstadter I haven't read - have you? What did you think?

>6 Rebeki: Welcome, Rebeki - come and join in whenever you like!

>9 deebee1: deebee, I too am fascinated by Moorish Spain; if there were one time and place I could travel to in a time machine, that would be it. Have you read Tariq Ali's Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree? Set just after the expulsion of the Moors - I thought it was a beautiful book, very evocative.

Yes, I'm a fan of Javier Marias too - and the book you mention, A Heart so White, was actually responsible for my career choice! Someone lent it to me when I lived in Spain years ago, just after I graduated, and I decided that I wanted to be like the narrator, and that was that. I've also read All Souls, and just the other day I bought (Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me.

Finished my first book of the year:

Nada by Carmen Laforet

Right after the Spanish Civil War eighteen-year-old orphan Andrea arrives in Barcelona to live with her mother's family while she attends university, eager to break free of the restraints of the small village in which she has been living with another relative, and of the convent in which she spent the war. She yearns for freedom but is immediately plunged into the oppressive atmosphere which reigns in the family home, where poverty and the scars of war feed the fraticidal hatred between Andrea's two uncles, Juan and Ramon, whose sisters have all managed to escape the family home - the last remaining one, the austere, uptight Angustias, leaves home for a convent shortly after Andrea's arrival.
Andrea tries to rise above her sordid home life at university, and the world she enters there is epitomised in her best friend Ena - beautiful, rich Ena and her beautiful, rich, "normal" family, which of course turns out to have its own skeletons in the cupboard. Andrea strives to keep the two worlds separate but can't keep Ena out, and the two inevitably collide.
On one level, Nada is a perfectly enjoyable female bildungsroman (and one with a great female voice) - but it's also a lot more. The family home represents post-war Spain, the warring brothers an image for a nation in which brothers and friends have turned against each other; the war may have ended, but the wounds haven't healed. The once-bourgeouis family now forced to sell its furniture bit by bit to the rag-and-bone man to survive, hunger as a constant theme - this is not just a family but a nation on its knees. I picture Andrea feeling her way through this maze as if blind-folded, unable to find the right way - because there is no right way, there's just nothing - nada.
Without there being any resolution at the end (the reader continues to picture Andrea feeling her way along, just in a different place), the novel ends on a note of hope in the form of Ena's letter and the change it brings to Andrea's life.

A great start to my Spanish trip; this is a novel I'd been meaning to read for years, ever since reading Carmen Laforet's book of short stories La Llamada when I was still at school (the first book I ever read in Spanish).

Wonderful review, Rachel! I'll be sure to read "Nada" this year.

Rachel, I'll be very eager to read your review of Granada in Belle; I've been meaning to read that one for a long time.

>14 rachbxl:, Nada sounds great. The Spanish Civil War is another one of those things that randomly fascinates me for no reason that I can explain.

> 13, i have not read any Tariq Ali, but will take note of this title -- thanks for the mention. to prepare myself for a trip to Morocco last month, i started on a Moorish reading jag and have kept it up so i'm dipping in and out of stories with similar themes as the book you mention. my next read will be Leo Africanus by Amin Maalouf, a fictional memoir of this real-life traveller who was a witness to the revolutionary changes in the Mediterranean and North Africa in the 15th-16th centuries.

imagine, a book to be responsible for one's career choice -- how cool is that!

Great review of Nada - I look forward to tackling it again. And on the strength of your review in Belletrista of Baba Yaga Laid an Egg, I think I'll be adding it to my wishlist. This is assuming, of course, that I like the other Ugrešić books I have at home, but this seems likely!

Great Nada review and just as I said, I remember none of the that! Oh if only LT existed back then I might have had a thread on it. :)

>16 fannyprice: FannyP, I've had my sights on Granada for a long time as well. In fact I suggested it to avaland for Belle because I knew I'd have to get round to reading it that way! I started it last night and so far it's wonderful. Very, very unusually for me it's making me want to slow right down and savour it.

>17 deebee1: deebee, I look forward to reading your comments on Leo Africanus; it's been on my TBR shelf for quite a while.

My second book of the year:

Za Głosem Sangomy by Agnieszka Podolecka
(I don't think it's available in English translation)

I'm trying to read as much as I can in Polish as a means of getting my understanding of the language up to the level I need for work, but my problem is that I struggle to find things that are accessible but not silly and frothy. This was perfect.

Twenty-something Wiktoria gives up her high-powered job in advertising and flies off to Cape Town for a long holiday. On her first day a small wooden figure is thrust into her hands, and the man who gives it to her begs her to return it to Lalibela, Ethiopia - and is then murdered before Wiktoria's eyes. Wiktoria is rescued by a young American man whom she met earlier and instinctively disliked. Realising the power of the ancient wooden figure, they decide that they have no option but to head for Ethiopia - and this is the start of a crazy journey across Africa, crossing borders illegally on horseback, camping under the stars, eating gazelle they have shot, and, of course, falling wildly in love... Meanwhile Wiktoria's sister Dagmara, a medical student, is so worried about her sister (riots in South Africa mean that the phone lines are down) that she jumps on a plane to Nairobi just before the city is closed because of an epidemic. She just happens to be staying in the same hotel as a team from Médecins sans Frontières and her offer of help is gratefully accepted by the whole team except for Michael, a French doctor to whom she takes an instant dislike...and ends up falling in love with.
The two couples meet up in Kenya and Dagmara and Michael decide to accompany Wiktoria and Robert to Lalibela. The story is a page-turning succession of dramas and cliff-hangers requiring total and utter suspension of disbelief; I'm sure I'd have hated it in another language but in Polish I loved it because it kept me reading (and I learnt loads of essential vocab about horses with broken legs, snake bites, emergency rescue by helicopter, hunting game with pistols, etc etc).
This hugely enjoyable book is really very flawed, and there are several techniques used by Podolecka that had me scratching my head. Her use of footnotes, for example - there's a fine line between elucidating something and treating your reader like an idiot. Can a Polish reader really not be expected to know the first thing about Africa? One Pole who does know a heck of a lot about Africa is Podolecka herself, but it was perhaps a mistake to try to cram all her knowledge into one book. And particularly a mistake to have it all relayed by the characters rather than in descriptive passages. The two sisters and their boyfriends come across as unsufferable know-it-alls in consequence!
My favourite odd decision on the part of the author was to dedicate the novel to her two daughters (so far so good) and - this is were it gets tricky - to name the sisters in the book after them. Unfortunately this means that as well as knowing everything about everything under the sun, the sisters are also a pair of goody-two-shoes; they have no faults whatsoever and are two of the least credible characters I've ever encountered!

Anyway, for all its faults I hugely enjoyed reading this, and I hope my next Polish choice will be similarly successful. Rebeki, I recommend this one to you but to nobody else!

You need Polish for work? What is your job?

Highly amusing review, Rach.

What about Sienkiewicz's Quo Vadis? Surely that should be easily available in Polish, and I think could also be amusing AND teach you vocab?

That sounds fun! Maybe not to read, but certainly to hear about ;-)

>22 lilisin: Lilisin, I'm a conference interpreter for the EU. I currently work from French, Italian and Spanish (into English, my mother tongue), and by the end of this year I'll have added Polish to my working combination (snorts with nervous laughter at the thought and changes the subject very quickly).

>23 polutropos: Andrew, Sienkiewicz is just one of many Polish writers for whom I have far too much respect to tackle them yet. There are so many fabulous books to be read in Polish but I don't want to spoil them by getting to them too early - although maybe it's time I gave something serious a try again, as it's a good while since I attempted anything halfway respectable; maybe I'll be able to manage more than I realise. (One of the many Polish books on my shelf is a translation from Czech, actually; I was going to ask if you knew the writer but it seems I haven't added it to my library and I can't remember her name).

Just as a matter of note, the Hofstadter is a 100 page essay attached to the back of his translation of That Mad Ache by Francoise Sagan.

Always fun to read about your reading, Rachel.

Wow, thanks for letting me know. Maybe it's you I should be sending my resume to!

El Salón de Ámbar by Matilde Asensi
(no English translation?)

The novel's title means "The Amber Room", referring to a chamber decorated with amber and gold panels in the Catherine Palace near St Petersburg. So beautiful that some called it "the eighth wonder of the world", it was looted by the Nazis and has never reappeared...so it's just asking to have this kind of novel written about its fate!

The novel's narrator, 33-year old Ana, is the owner of an antique shop in the Spanish town of Avila...and the Spanish member of the "chess club", an infamous international gang of art thieves. Ana's suspicions are aroused when she is commissioned to steal a second-rate work for a huge sum of money, and her sleuthing leads to the discovery of the Amber Room, hidden beneath the sewers of Weimar in Germany.

I've been looking forward to reading Asensi for some time, and decided to start with this, her first novel. It wasn't the greatest book I've read but it was far from being the worst, and it was an engaging way to pass a flight back from Spain this afternoon. I'm curious to read more of her work as I found things here that are forgiveable in a first novel but might not be in subsequent work. For example, I confess to almost entire ignorance about how international art thieves work, so I was willing to suspend disbelief on that score, and for all I know Asensi's spot on, but - and I don't think I'm giving anything away here - the discovery of the bodies in the bunkers was unnecessarily sensational, I thought, as though she had got completey carried away. Anyway, I enjoyed this first novel enough to want to see if her style develops, and if all her books are as readable as this I'll certainly be taking more on trips with me.

Citas en Manhattan by Emma Reverter
(I doubt that it'll ever be translated into English, but trust me, you can live without it).

When I said I was going to read more Spanish literature over these 6 months, admittedly this wasn't quite the kind of thing I had in mind - but I bought this in San Sebastián earlier this week, in desperate need of something light and frothy, which it certainly was.

The writer is a Spanish journalist based at the UN in New York; she has written books on (from memory) Darfur and Guantánamo, so this novel is something of a departure for her. It takes the form of imaginary columns written by a Spanish journalist based at the UN in NY (and yes, she's written books on Darfur and...you get the picture) who is told by her Barcelona-based paper to produce something light and frothy for the daily August supplement - so she decides to investigate the New York dating scene. It was mildly amusing, and it least it was well-written. The end.

And your conclusion has given someone a chuckle, so all is good :-)

Then it was all worth while!

I'm pleased to report that I've managed to finish something of considerably higher quality, coincidentally enough based in Spain, although not by a Spanish writer:

Granada by Radwa Ashour
Translated from the Arabic by William Granara

I've been wanting to read this for a while, and got the push I needed when avaland agreed to let me review it for Belletrista. It's a beautiful novel about the fall of Moorish Spain to the Christians, from the Arab viewpoint.

The Draining Lake by Arnaldur Indriđason
Translated from the Icelandic by Bernard Scudder

I was intending to read Indriđason's Reykjavík Murder Mystery series in order, but gave up waiting for Tainted Blood to fall into my hands. I don't think it mattered.

The discovery of a skeleton weighed down with Cold War-era listening equipment in a lake which is drying up prompts a police investigation involving the likeable detective Erlendur (he makes Wallander look talkative and sociable, but like him he's very human) and his colleagues. Interspersed with details of the investigation are the reminiscences of the murderer (the identity of the murderer is never in doubt, at least not to the reader; the enigma is the identity of the victim, which is revealed with a satisfying little twist in the final pages).

I enjoyed this and I thought it was really well done. The reminiscences take us back to Cold War Leipzig, where a group of Icelandic students, specially chosen for the dubious honour by the Icelandic communist party, attend university. Their youthful socialist ideals soon clash with the harsh reality of life in a surveillance society, and the novel becomes a tale of espionage and counter-espionage in all its grubby sordidness. Yet ultimately this is a very personal story about lives wrecked by the communist regime, with the murderer eliciting compassion and pity rather than condemnation.

Instrukcja obsługi Polski by Radek Knapp
translated into Polish from the German by Maurycy Merunowicz

This is one of those non-fiction books which purports to serve as a guide/introduction to a country and its people. Unfortunately, my benchmark for this genre is John Hooper's excellent The Spaniards (later updated as The New Spaniards), and everything else falls short...including this. I think part of the problem is that half-Polish, half-Austrian Knapp, despite his Viennese upbringing, isn't able to keep enough distance from his subject to be objective, and the book often becomes little more than a string of personal observations.

>32 rachbxl: You may have only missed the progression of Erlendur's personal life. In the first book that was translated he was a failure at husband and father and had no personal life at all. He went home and read survival stories. I read some reviews which referred to him as "a loser". In some ways, I'd have to agree, but this makes for a great starting point for a character. btw, there is a very good Icelandic movie of "Jar City" which I thought kept to the book quite well. Worth checking out.

>34 avaland: In this one he's still a failure as a father, still goes home and reads survival stories, but has just the tiniest little glimmer of a personal life, with the promise of more as the novel ends. I'm not sure I'd go so far as "loser", but certainly very flawed - and all the more interesting (and likeable) for it! I didn't know about the film, thanks.

The Door by Magda Szabó
Translated from the Hungarian by Len Rix

Why has it taken me so long to read this? (Several months). It's not long (260 pages), nor is it difficult or innaccessible. Objectively I admire it as a novel, but it rarely grabbed me - yet every time I abandoned it I had to go back because I kept thinking about it. I still don't know what to make of it.

A young writer hires an older neighbour, Emerence, as her housekeeper, and the novel is the story of their relationship over the next several decades. The old woman is a unique character. She works tirelessly at her countless jobs, binding the neighbourhood together. Despite knowing the secrets of all those she works for, she is fiercely protective of her own privacy and very little is known about her; over the years the younger woman gradually becomes the only person Emerence lets into her life, but then only on one-sided terms. I really appreciated the parts about Emerence's relationship with the writer's dog, whom Emerence insists on calling Viola (he's male), which were both funny and touching. Yet a lot of the rest left me cold, even when I suspected I should be affected. I don't know if it's the translation, or the voice of the narrator (the writer), but something kept me from caring at all about what was happening; I felt I was seeing everything from a great distance.

Shame. I can't help feeling I've missed something here. I'd be interested to hear what anyone else thinks...

Near to the Wild Heart by Clarice Lispector
translated from the Portuguese by Giovanni Pontiero

I won't say much about this for the moment as I read it for the "Trio" piece I'm writing on Lispector for Belletrista; she's a new writer to me, but someone whose work I've been circling round for a while, and I decided to start with this, her first novel. This is another that took me a while to read, but this time I know exactly why; if I'd read it any more quickly I don't think I'd have got much from it. Not an easy read, but well worth the effort. (Lois, I promise to speed up with the next two, or else I'll never get the piece written in time!)

To Mervas by Elisabeth Rynell
translated from the Swedish by Victoria Häggblom

Another Belletrista read, this time for a review. A quiet, thought-provoking novel set in the Swedish wilderness (the wilderness being both within and without the main character), due for publication by Archipelago on 1 May. Elisabeth Rynell is a poet, I think, and you can see that in her prose, sparing and lyrical.

I've been in one of those moods the last few weeks where no book really grabs me - and the worst of it is that I desperately want to be grabbed! Real life has turned rather stressful, and for once fiction just isn't distracting me; I keep finding that I've no idea what the last few pages said.

The only thing I've been able to stick with recently is

Committed: a Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage by Elizabeth Gilbert

It's a follow-up to her immensely successful Eat, Pray, Love, which I was pleasantly surprised by last year. Even so, I'm not sure I'd have rushed to read this had I not been in this book funk, but I'm glad I did because I found a kind of peace in it.

I'm sure I'm not far from being the only one of her readers to feel that I have rather a lot in common with Elizabeth Gilbert - we're similar in age and our paths through life have been horribly similar. I also like the way she looks at things, and the way she writes, with no self-pity and a good dose of self-deprecating humour. We left her at the end of the first book in love with an older Brazilian man, Felipe. Battered survivors of nasty divorces (are any not nasty?), both felt strongly that they didn't want to marry again, and that their personal commitment was enough. Not enough for the US Immigration Service, though, and this second book opens with Felipe being thrown out of the US and told he can't return unless they get married. The couple spent the next year wandering round Asia in a frustrating wait for Felipe's "fiance visa" to come through, and Gilbert spent the time thinking, talking and researching about marriage in an attempt to make peace with it. She read academic theses about it, talked to women in remote villages in Vietnam, quizzed her friends, and found out things she'd never thought to ask before about her own mother and grandmother. She's clear about the fact that she's not an anthropologist, nor a psychologist, so there's no attempt to present her findings as anything more than her personal musings. I really enjoyed the combination of the personal and the more general; as with the previous book, Committed could have been an excruciating exercise in navel-gazing, but Gilbert's too clever for that.

For weeks now I've been in one of those awful phases where nothing grabs me. I think it's me rather than the books but I'm having to put all sorts of things I do actually want to read to one side, and I'm really hoping it'll pass soon. (I can't even claim to be doing all sorts of wonderful things with the great amounts of free time I suddenly have!)

Still, I've finally finished the second of my three Lispectors for my forthcoming Trio for Belletrista, a collection of short stories this time:

Family Ties by Clarice Lispector
translated from the Portuguese by Giovanni Pontiero

Whilst I'll save my comments for the Belle piece, I'll just say that these stories, like the novella Near to the Wild Heart aren't easy to read, but they're worth the effort. (But not the greatest thing when you're stuck in a book funk, it has to be said!)

The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector
translated from the Portuguese by Giovanni Pontiero

Brilliant, what an amazing little book. Enjoyed this far more than the previous two Lispectors but am very glad I worked up to it like I did (this was her last work).

The other piece of good news is that I'm really enjoying my current book as well - After You'd Gone by Maggie O'Farrell.

Congrats ;)

After You'd Gone is an accomplished piece of work. Savor it!

I have After You'd Gone on my TBR. Looking forward to your impressions so that I know whether to move it up or down a few tomes.

RidgewayGirl, move it up! That's only based on the first two-thirds, mind...

After You'd Gone by Maggie O'Farrell

There you go, Ridgeway Girl - I've finished it now, and all I can say is, READ IT NOW!!! I loved it.

I don't think anything I say will do it justice though. Alice lies in a coma (suicide attempt? accident?) with her family around her hospital bed, and the narrative shifts between the present and various stages in Alice's life, with the narrator changing too. The story, about family ties and human relationships, is genuinely touching; I don't think I've read anything so moving for a long time, moving because it rings so true. Alice is one of the most alive characters I've come across in ages, and I found her really likeable - which made her story hit me harder. Other characters too are just as credible, her sister Kirsty and best friend Rachel working particularly well for me.

This was O'Farrell's first novel, and as Akeela said a couple of posts up, it's an accomplished piece of work, amazingly well put together. I read The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox a couple of years ago and enjoyed it, but nothing like as much as this one.

Where has the last month gone? Unfortunately it wasn't spent reading - although I'm very excited about my new discovery, Patrick Gale, who has brought me out of a book funk lasting a couple of months.

The Whole Day Through by Patrick Gale

A real friend (the opposite of real here being LT, as opposed to imaginary) whose reading opinions I value raved about this a couple of weeks ago, and last week it was recommended by a second friend who lent me her copy. They were right!

Twenty years before the novel opens Laura and Ben had a love affair whilst at Oxford, and haven't had any contact since it ended. Difficult family circumstances happen to have brought them both to Winchester, where they meet again and inevitably try to rekindle their romance. As far as the linear story goes, that's about it, but the story's not really the point. I think this is a novel about what brought them both to this point, how we change, how we present ourselves to others, what we give and what we hold back, what we hide behind.

The title comes from the fact that the novel takes place over one single summer's day, and the chapter headings reflect that, but the narrative flits back and forth over the decades, telling Laura and Ben's divergent and then convergent stories.

What I most liked about this was the wonderfully restrained way Gale has of telling it - it's a quiet novel (the friend whose copy I read said the rest of her book group said it was "boring"), but one with a lot to say if you listen. I don't want to spoil the plot, but one single sentence towards the end made me gasp - it's what had to happen, but to put it so simply in one sentence and leave the reader to assimilate the implications is stunningly effective.

Thanks for your thoughtful review, Rach! My boss has been trying to get me to read Notes From an Exhibition for the longest time - if you enjoyed his writing, I may give him a go afterall! Will look out for The Whole Day Through, as well.

Hi Akeela! My friend lent me Notes from an Exhibition as well, and I finished it yesterday. Really enjoyed it - I'll be back with some thoughts on it later.

Hi Rachel! That is really great news.

Nice review, Rachel; I'm adding The Whole Day Through to my wish list.

Thanks, Darryl - hope you enjoy it. Although you might have to add this one too, as I think I preferred it:

Notes from an Exhibition by Patrick Gale

Again, not an awful lot by way of story! Painter Rachel Kelly dies, and in sorting through her belongings her children (and husband) find out a lot about her.

Each chapter is introduced by a note from a posthumous exhibition of her work (this is all we know about the exhibition), for example (I'm making this one up), "In this portrait Kelly's daughter is seen in the yellow dress she wore for her first day at school, situating the work around year XXXX". The chapter then recounts events in which the yellow dress figures, maybe ten years ago, maybe thirty. This is done so gently that it took me a while to figure it out and at first I didn't bother to read the notes properly. By the end I realised that the notes, and the events they point to, are actually "notes on a life".

Once again, I liked the understatement - and there was another of those seemingly innocent sentences, as in The Whole Day Through which took my breath away. And I loved the characters, as individuals and in the way the weave their fabric of family life. (The only character I found less convincing was Rachel's long-lost sister, who reappears towards the end, at which point everything seemed to get a little compressed and rushed).

This was a Richard and Judy choice a couple of years ago, which of course put me off, but I'm glad I persevered. Another bit of blurb says Gale is "the perfect Dordogne read", and I think that's probably true - very well-written, a great story with a few twists and turns on the way, believable characters...and it doesn't require a great deal of the reader. It's just there to be enjoyed, and what's wrong with that?

The Distance between Us by Maggie O'Farrell

This might have benefitted from not being read straight after After You'd Gone, which I don't think it lives up to. To be fair, it would also have been better if I'd read it straight through instead of breaking off to read the two Gales.

Stella sees a man she thinks she recognises on a London bridge, and it's enough to make her drop out of her life (not for the first time) and run and hide in a remote part of Scotland. Her story, inextricable from the story of her sister Nina, is told in non-chronological flashbacks.

Meanwhile, events in Jake's life lead him inexorably from Hong Kong to the same Scottish hide-away. His story, too, is told in flashbacks, although not as extensively as Stella's.

It's a perfectly readable novel, but a bit of a disappointment after After You'd Gone, mainly because I didn't find the characters or the situations consistently credible. The characters in After You'd Gone took on lives of their own, whereas here they were moved by O'Farrell and consequently didn't seem natural. (And just for the record, if I had a sister like Nina the distance between us would be vast!)

47 - Sounds great! Your review reminds me a bit of the movie Before Sunset (sequel to Before Sunrise). Not sure if you've seen it, but it has the same themes of all in one day/minutiae of human interaction and relationships.

>54 janemarieprice: I haven't seen it, but now you mention it it does ring a bell - I'll have to look out for it.

Travesuras de la Niña Mala by Mario Vargas Llosa
(English translation available: The Bad Girl)

Not sure what I think of this. I really enjoyed reading it, and it made a couple of flights go very quickly this week. However, there's an awful lot of telling and not a lot of showing - which perhaps just goes to show what a wonderful story-teller Vargas Llosa is; I don't know that a lesser writer would have got away with it.

The "niña mala" of the title is a girl the narrator falls in love with as a teenager in the well-heeled Miraflores district of Lima. She turns him down, but it doesn't end there as she turns up in various guises wherever he is in the world, and his love for her never dims, regardless of what she does. If this is a love story it's not a particularly edifying one - what would Ricardo have made of his life had he been able to leave her behind? Surely more than he makes of it dogged as he is by her constant memory. At times I wanted to cry for Ricardo, whilst at others I wanted to shake him and tell him she wasn't worth it.

I really enjoyed the commentary on Peru's political situation over the decades, seen through Ricardo's expatriate eyes, as well as Vargas Llosa's handling of Ricardo's ambivalent feelings towards both his native country and his adopted country, France.

Now I'm off to see what others on LT have made of this.

>55 rachbxl:. Rach, I always see this book around. I might just give it a go after your intriguing review. I haven't read Mario Vargas Llosa yet but have been eyeing Aunt Julia and the Scritpwriter after great reviews here on LT recently.Thanks!

I have The Bad Girl but haven't read it yet, even though I love all the other Mario Vargas Llosa books I've read. I may have it mixed up with another book, but is this the one that was supposed to be homage to Madame Bovary?

>56 akeela: I look forward to seeing what you make of it, Akeela!

>57 rebeccanyc: Rebecca, you're absolutely right - I just googled it. I'm intrigued. Will have to look into this later - if I find any interesting links I'll post them.

Zigzag through the Bitter-Orange Trees by Ersi Sotiropoulos
translated from the Greek by Peter Green

Really enjoyed this - I read it to review in the next issue of Belletrista. Post-modern, fragmented narrative about 4 young people in and around modern-day Athens and how their lives weave in and out of each other.

My feeling when I finished it reminded me of how I felt in the autumn in Gdansk when I saw a contemporary dance piece based on Boris Vian's L'Herbe rouge (not my usual kind of thing; I was given a free ticket by a dancer I'd met, and I loved it). Without either having a classically happy ending, both the novel and the dance left me feeling uplifted at the end - partly by the story, but more, I think, by the idea that this is what art is for. Is either Zigzag or the dance piece essential to life? Of course not - but they both left me feeling that the world was a much better place with them in it. (I know this argument is valid for a lot of what I read, but it's these two pieces of art that have caused this particular sensation for me recently - which doesn't mean that this is the best book I've read in that time, interestingly).

The Bed I Made by Lucie Whitehouse

I've read this so you don't have to, anyone who reads this! I should have been warned off by the sticker proclaiming it a "Specsavers TV Book Club Summer Read", but I was sucked in by the comparisons with Maggie O'Farrell in the cover blurb. (Here's my comparison with O'Farrell: she does it much, much better).

To be fair, it's readable enough; it's just that it left me feeling completely unsatisfied, "what was the point of that?" kind of thing. Kate flees London and an abusive relationship and tries to build a new life for herself on the Isle of Wight, but the emails and text messages make it impossible for her to leave the past behind. There's a sustained attempt to build up the kind of creepy atmosphere of general unease that O'Farrell does so well, but I wasn't convinced. Why doesn't she just go to the police? Well, obviously because then there'd have been no story, but that might not have been a bad thing...

>60 rachbxl: Literary fast food, eh? Always good to see what you are reading, Rach.

Stop press! I've read a book! I've never read as little as I have done these last few months; maybe this was a turning point.

One Day by David Nicholls

This is the novel I thought I was reading a couple of months ago when I read The Whole Day Through, which I enjoyed, but not half as much as this.

Emma and Dexter get together the night before they leave Edinburgh University, spend one night together and then go their not-entirely-separate ways. The narrative catches up with them on that same day every day for the next 20 years.

I loved this book. Nicholls is very funny and in places his writing really sparkles, and he catches the mood of 90s Britain well. The story of the friendship and the love between Emma and Dexter is beautifully, sensitively, tantalisingly told. But it's not that. I think the reason I love it is that this is a story for me right now. It's not yet 20 years since I left university, but I just went to a reunion celebtating 20 years since matriculation; in other words, I'm more or less of Emma and Dexter's generation. Over the last 20 years (the same 20 years as those covered by Nicholls), my friends and I have lived through what Emma and Dexter experienced. This is the last 2 decades of our lives in novel form.

But it's not just that that makes it so good either. What makes it really special is the treatment of the way we all set out so shiny and optimistic...and as life goes by we don't notice the shine fading, but at some point we start to settle for compromises that would have been unthinkable to us at the outset, compromises which our more realistic older selves realise are the only way to survive. Our lives now aren't bad, but they jar so with the idealistic views we had 20 years ago. On a recent summer evening in my college hall, at the reunion, I was fascinated by how I couldn't see any difference in my peers. To me they seemed as shiny as ever, but then I realised that that's because my shine must have faded with theirs, because that's part of getting older, and it's not a bad thing. That, for me, is what this novel articulates perfectly. It's one of the most moving books I've read in a long time.

Wonderful review, Rachel; I'll definitely look for this in the near future.

Agreed. I'm convinced, after dithering about this book for a loooooong time!

Hope you both enjoy it! (I know a couple of others who've enjoyed it so it's not entirely down to my excitement at having been able to finish a book at long last).

And I've finished another!

The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas

Unlike others in this group, I really enjoyed this. No, "enjoy" isn't the word as at times (most of the time, even) it made for an excruciatingly uncomfortable read, but I think it's extremely well done. I had a blip in the middle when I thought for a while it was all too much, but I got over it.

The book opens with a man slapping an unruly 3-year old (not his own son) at a barbeque. This slap has far-reaching effects (a court case is possibly the least of them) among the people at the event, who would previously have termed themseves, unthinkingly, a close-knit group of family and friends. The narrative is divided into ten chapters, each from the viewpoint of (although not in the voice of) one of the people present. The slap forces the characters - and the reader - to come out of their comfort zones and to confront the fact that life is never black and white; the slap itself is just the trigger for a long, honest, painful look at modern society. Is anyone right here? Is anyone any more wrong than anybody else?

I'd agree with others that there's a lot of swearing, sex and drugs, shocking amounts, even. Unrealistic? Certainly not the sex and the swearing, and although drugs aren't part of my world I doubt I'd have to go far to find perfectly normal, respectable people like those in the book taking drugs like this; in fact I know I'd find them tomorrow if I wanted to. I chose my words carefully there - "perfectly normal, respectable people" because that's what I think they are. Normal, respectable people in public, frantically fighting their demons in private - just like all of us. Except that here Tsiolkas puts them in the spotlight and makes public what's normally private. Other LTers have said that not a single one of them is likeable; I'm not sure I agree. Sure, some of them have some horrendous traits and I wouldn't necessarily want to be friends with them, but I think they're likeable because of these traits and how they combine with their redeeeming features. They're real people, warts and all. Interesting to note though that the female characters are far more sympathetically portrayed even though the writer's male - some of the men are little more than animals! And yet not entirely unlikeable animals, for all their faults. The feeling I come away with is that at the end of the book Tsiolkas, as he puts away the microscope under which he's scrutinised his unsuspecting subjects, shrugs and says, "Humans - that's how we are, what do you want me to do about it? Men are how they are, women are how they are, I can only show you what's there, I can't change it for you, I can't make it more palatable than it is" - and then he lets the curtain fall and leaves his characters to get on with it.

Sky Burial by Xinran
Translated from the Chinese by Julia Lovell and Esther Tyldesley

Read for a Belletrista article so I won't say much here, except that it was wonderful. I really enjoyed Xinran's The Good Women of China a couple of years ago so I don't know why it's taken me till now to read this one.

Is anyone any more wrong than anybody else?

Yes, in my eyes there was. I really, really really couldn't stand the mother of the little boy who was slapped. Her whole approach to parenting infuriated me. I think my strong emotion comes from knowing too many people who are a little bit like her. But that's just my opinion. Other people might think she's a wonderful person.

Interesting comments on The Slap. I had mixed feelings when I read it but found it very compelling and gave it four stars. Looking back on it though my thoughts have changed and I feel like lowering my rating. My book club read it and everyone hated it. I really think they were blinded by the ugliness in the novel and didn't take into account the points that you made. I think that because it pulls such strong reactions from people, it definitely has a certain something. But I still don't think it should win the Booker.

>67 Nickelini: Definitely not Booker material! I don't pay much attention to the Booker these days but this really shouldn't win (and I say that without having read any of the other contenders).

Joyce, I have to say I'm with you on Rosie. But what I admire about the novel is how it challenged me to set aside my subjective responses and say, "hang on - just because I don't like her...is she wrong?" I happen to think she's very wrong, but as you say, that's just my opinion. (Although I'd be worried about anyone who did think she was a wonderful person!)

(Although I'd be worried about anyone who did think she was a wonderful person!)

Yes! I could never spend much time with someone like her. You know her kids would be bratty and I'd probably end up slapping one of them ;-)

#65: I thought I had commented on how much I liked your review of The Slap, but I guess I hadn't. I've just finished reading it, and I'm between you and Joyce on my impression of it. I agree with you, these characters were quite normal despite their abhorrent behaviors, and I'm sure it wouldn't take me long to find people like this.

I couldn't stand Rosie, either. She was easily the most despicable character in the book, although Harry was pretty bad, too.

I think it would be interesting to see which of the eight main characters we each liked/sympathized with, and which ones we hated - we all agree that Rosie is just awful, but my least favourite was definitely Hector. I hated his section of The Slap the most, and I also hated the way Aisha described him in her section.

I actually liked Connie and Aisha, was ambivalent about Richie, Anouk, and Manolis, and disliked Hector, Rosie, and Harry - although, I didn't dislike Harry while I read his section of the novel. It was only after I learned more about him from Aisha that I decided he was an awful person.

>71 Cait86: Interesting idea! We differ wildly, actually, other than on Rosie (but even Rosie I had sympathy for because of how she turned out compared to the flashes we see of the young, fabulous Rosie).

I liked Aisha a lot, found her very human despite the reserved exterior. She's probably my favourite character overall. Anouk I liked as well - I could imagine myself joining her and Aisha on one of their nights out, although preferably without Rosie. Connie I was ambivalent towards - but that's ambivalence tending towards dislike. Of the male characters I most liked Manolis. Hector I was ambivalent towards initially - until Aisha's section, when I warmed to him! Not because I think he's an admirable character but because he came across to me as a real human being. Harry...not a lot going for him.

#71: Great idea, Cait! I didn't 'like' any of the characters, but I disliked Aisha and Manolis the least. What turned me off about Aisha the most was her unwavering support of Rosie, who I found to be utterly despicable and contemptible. That's certainly an admirable trait in a close friend, but not when it sets you against your husband and his family, and not when the other person needs a good shake or a "slap" in the face. I can forgive her for the affair she had with the Canadian vet, although her view that her affair was less egregious than Hector's was a bit mysterious to me.

I thought that Manolis was a product of an Old World culture, a very prejudiced and sexist one, but he wasn't as mean spirited and spiteful as some of the older Greeks.

Rosie was easily the most dislikable character for me, mainly because of the way in which she raised Hugo and her unwillingness to accept responsibility for her child's and husband's behaviors. Harry was almost as despicable, especially due to his macho attitudes and violent behavior. Connie and Richie were immature teenagers, so they were forgivable characters. Hector was pretty pathetic, and Anouk was shallow and distasteful.

So nice to see an actual conversation about s book....

#74 - I agree - I love reading reviews, but finding others who are reading the same book at the same time is far more interesting.

Actually, this conversation is tempting me to raise my rating of The Slap a bit. I'm a big believer that a book that sparks debate is a better book than a perfectly nice story that everyone loves. Books should cause a little disagreement, I think, because most important issues in life cause disagreement.

Regarding The Slap, I would have liked to read a section narrated by Gary. He was probably the character who I found the most repulsive, and I would have liked to read about what makes him tick - maybe then he would have deserved a little sympathy.

You have an interesting discussion going on here, Rachel! For my part, I most disliked Harry and most liked Manolis, but agree with #75 - it would be interesting to know whether seeing things from Gary's point of view would have made him seem less awful. As annoying as Rosie was, my opinion did soften a little when I read her chapter.

I agree that having access to all the characters' thoughts makes them seem worse than they are. I know I think some horrible, judgemental things sometimes, but fortunately nobody can read my mind! Though one happy side-effect of reading this book is that I'm now consciously trying to be nicer to those around me, in thought and deed, so as not to be like the characters in The Slap!

I've been reading extraordinarily little this year, partly because of other claims on my time but also because I've been struggling to find books that grab me. Whenever I go to a bookshop at the moment, or look through a publisher's catalogue, I find myself feeling overwhelmed by all the junk out there. It's silly because the junk's always been there and I've generally managed to navigate around it and find things I do want to read, but it's really getting me down at the moment. I've started to read countless books over the last few months which I've abandoned in frustration (I'd almost say in disgust!).

Yesterday I had a cursory look at the fiction section of the newsagent's in the Berlaymont building in Brussels, where just occasionally in the past I've found a little gem hidden among the piles of chick lit (I really must ask them at some point on what basis they select their books!), and I was lucky again:

A Fair Maiden by Joyce Carol Oates

If I hadn't fallen asleep with it in my hands last night I'd have read it in one sitting; instead I finished it over breakfast. A fabulously compulsive dark little tale about Katya, a 16-year old summer nanny from a working-class background, and the friendship she develops with the elegant Mr Kidder, 60+, refined, sophisticated, rich and charming. From the start I knew it wasn't going to end well, and Oates is wonderful at building up -and maintaining - a subtle sense of unease. The novel's strapline is "A tale of dark suspense" and that's what it is - and the suspense is so well done that you (like Katya) aren't sure what's reasonable any more. Are you over-reacting? Surely it's just your imagination? Mr Kidder wouldn't hurt her! Or would he? I could never really make my mind up. Equally blurred is the line between what's morally acceptable and what's not - I often found myself with the uncomfortable feeling that Oates had lulled me into sympathising with someone who was doing something morally reprehensible (at times Kidder, at times Katya).

A brilliant, dark little fairy story - highly recommended!

>77 rachbxl: glad you liked A Fair Maiden, I enjoyed it also. What did you think of the inclusion of the fairy tale?

I've really neglected this thread! I'm afraid it's not going to take me long to catch up as I haven't got a lot to show for all this time; I've been struggling to find things to read like never before, but there are signs that I'm finding my way back now.

On Black Sisters' Street by Chika Unigwe

The cover says this is the story of four Nigerian prostitutes in the Brussels red-light district - not something that would normally grab me, but as at the time I was on my way to work in the very same red-light district it seemed appropriate so I bought it (I hasten to add that I was going to a meeting in a conference centre). My hopes weren't high - but you should never judge a book by its cover! (Particularly not when the cover's wrong anyway and it's not set in Brussels at all but in Antwerp). What a wonderful book - a compelling voice telling a story that's not just captivating in itself, but also one which made me take a fresh look at the world around me. Isn't that the point of good fiction?

I won't say any more as I've promised to do a Belletrista review.

Sounds very interesting, look forward to the review. (When I started reading your post I was going to ask if it would be a good present for a friend of mine who lives in Brussels, but then I got to the location correction!)

Cesarz by Ryszard Kapuściński
available in English as The Emperor
audiobook

My first ever audiobook! Listened to as I drove through Germany to Poland a few weeks ago, desperately trying to soak up as much Polish as possible. Kapuściński's gripping account of Haile Selassie's reign in Ethiopia made the miles slip by unnoticed - and I can't remember who the reader was, but I could have listened to him for ever!

>80 wandering_star: I think it would still make a good present for anyone who lives here (I just found it odd that I didn't recognise any of the street names, until I realised it was Antwerp). Unigwe came to Belgium from Nigeria via The Netherlands (and went to great lengths to talk to Nigerian prositutes in Belgium before she wrote the book) so it gives a good outsider's view of Belgium. And if your friend happens to speak Dutch, Unigwe originally wrote the book in Dutch and then translated it into English herself.

A Wedding in December by Anita Shreve

I've been in the grip of an awful bout of insomnia these last few weeks. This book was lying around somewhere I was staying and I picked it up in the middle of the night. It whiled away the hours for a couple of nights but was distinctly unmemorable.

Nice to see you posting, rachbxl!

#82 - thanks. It sounds good (and unusual - I know what it is like when you go and live somewhere and get given several copies of the same book because it's the most commonly-stocked one about your new city/country).